1984 was peak 80s.

I was born in '68 making me 16 in 1984.

Junior in High School. Just getting my driver's license.

Being born in 68 puts you in Senior High right when everything in popular culture seemed to be focused on your cohort.

Huge fan of The Police and their album Synchronicity which had come out in 83. The Cars Heartbeat City came out in 84 and my brother and I went to the concert in Minneapolis. Purple Rain came out in 84.

Movies by John Hughes made me feel seen. The Breakfast Club would come out during my senior year. Really, 83-86 was prime 80s.

You got to be a kid when young directors like Ridley Scott, John Carpenter, James Cameron, David Cronenberg were doing their best work creating entirely original franchises or doing excellent remakes. Alien, The Thing, Blade Runner, Terminator, The Fly etc.

And technology was at a major launching point. The first Apple Macintosh released in 1984. The 1986 song by Timbuk3 'The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades' kind of captured the zeitgeist - emerging from the stagflation of the 70s and 80s and a brown and dingy world into one that seemed to be getting a lot more shiny, new and promising.

Though my mom and dad getting wiped out financially in '86, a brief stint of homelessness, my dad dying young in 1989 and then spending the next decade scrabbling to survive and make a life for myself ended that brief, hopeful period.

Eventually managed to go to college (graduated at 30) and then again for my Masters (got that at 40). But its been tough. Had a 7-month stint of unemployment ten years ago. Somehow I didn't manage to accumulate much wealth during the economic boom of the 90s and 2000s. Just dog-paddling to keep our heads above water while raising four kids. Now the wife and I are working and just managing to keep ahead of the bills. House and cars are paid off. Kids are grown. Three have moved out (two married, one with a partner). One is divorced and back living at home with us.

And now with the bullshit going on in our Federal Government and Economy it is starting to feel like the bad 70s-80s stagflation era all over again. Only now most music and movies suck with nothing new or original - only endlessly recycling and ruining what was imaginative, creative, new and original when I was a kid.

And all that contributes to my evolution as an old man yelling at clouds.